


Vanishing Point

by LeaXIII



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeaXIII/pseuds/LeaXIII
Summary: It's been more than two years since Tim uploaded the final entry to the Marble Hornets channel. Since then, his life has been a blur of interstate highways and cheap motel rooms, until one day, he gets a phone call that changes everything.





	1. Chapter 1

_Time passes, even in moments when the world is standing still._

It's six in the morning. Tim could glance at his phone to confirm it, but the distant whistle of a train, echoing through the crisp air the same way it has for the last eight mornings, right on the dot, is enough to signal the hour.

He's been here too long. The thought pulses behind his eyes like a migraine, and he ignores it. He likes to think he's gotten good at that, over the last two years.

Two years, ten months, and a day.

He could glance at his phone to confirm it, but the running tally in his head has never been wrong, even when the hours and days and weeks all blend together in a dull blur of two-lane roads and hotel rooms. He doesn't remember when exactly he started keeping track of how long it's been since he left his hometown.

At least, that's what he tells himself, but he's sure it was some night in November, somewhere in Colorado where the snow crunched beneath his feet as he walked into a convenience store to buy a cup of hot cocoa. He refused to take a sip until he was back to the motel, where he sat on the solitary bed and mumbled an empty happy birthday to the empty room as the drink did its best to warm him from the inside out.

The smoke he pulls into his lungs now isn't doing much better in that regard, though not for lack of trying. He flicks the ashes over the edge of the railing, and watches them drift down to the parking lot one story below. The wind catches a few and pulls them instead toward the open sea that's just barely visible from where he's standing, the sound of the waves muffled a bit by the barrier of trees on the edge of the parking lot.

As Tim finishes off his cigarette and retreats into his motel room, he finds himself wondering whether any of the ashes will make it to the water, or if the tangle of trees will become their final resting place.

* * *

 

The jingling of a bell announces his arrival as he pushes open the door to the gas station down the street from his motel. It's far too early for something so loud and festive, but he's grown accustomed to the sound, and the cashier smiles and greets him by name as he shuffles to the ATM next to the counter.

He's been here too long.

The ATM greets him by name as well; the _wrong_ name, of course, the name on the card that he slides rather than his own.

It felt filthy at first, stealing the identity of a dead man, but Tim has learned to rationalize it. He likes to think he's gotten good at that, over time.

After all, it's not like Jay is going to need it, he reminds himself for the thousandth time as he enters Jay's PIN – 8416, leave it to Jay to try his own PIN as a combination in a _public_ video and then _never_ _change_ _it_ – and selects the maximum withdrawal amount for the day.

He's not worried about running out of money. With the balance in his account, Jay could have been eating at steakhouses and staying in Hiltons the whole time rather than sleeping in his car and he'd still have money to spare; even now, Tim can't help feeling something like respect at the realization, that even with Jay's whole world going to hell and all the bad decisions he'd made along the way, burning through all his available funds hadn't been one of them. Obviously, however long it took, he'd been prepared to see his little investigation through to the end.

Tim yanks the stack of bills from the machine, severing that train of thought in its tracks.

Before leaving, he grabs a few items from the nearest shelf as more of a courtesy than anything else, drops them on the counter in a disheveled mess of snacks – peanuts and beef jerky, nothing fancy – and pays with a fresh twenty from the bundle before stuffing the rest into his wallet.

Plastic bag in tow, he leaves the store with the same commotion of jingling as before, and casts only a quick glance at the morning traffic beginning to pour in to the small parking lot, before setting a brisk pace for the side of the building where his car is parked. After two years, he doesn't get that odd sense of d _éjà_ vu anymore.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

He pulls his car door shut to create a closed-off silence, muffling the hum of idling trucks behind the store and the _whoosh_ of cars driving past on the nearby interstate. In the still space, he exhales heavily and pulls his phone from the cupholder to check the time. The clock on his dashboard has become all but obsolete; he can't remember when he last changed it to reflect whatever time zone he happened to wander into, but it wasn't at any point after he crossed back into Central Time at the Texas state line, although he certainly had plenty of opportunity to do it before the seemingly endless desert had given way to more familiar-looking environments.

Surprisingly, his car's clock actually matches the time on his phone. But it's the notification on his lock screen that locks him in place.

A missed call, and a voicemail. From Jay.

Three minutes ago.

_Time passes, even when it doesn't at all._

The phone tumbles to the floorboard.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Tim, it's me.”_

Already, he knows what this is.

“ _I watched the tape that I took from you. And now, I'm at Rosswood, trying to retrace Alex and Jessica's steps.”_

Why _now_ , though? Years, it's been _years_ , nearly three, since this voicemail was, for all intents and purposes, lost to the ether.

A hint of static bleeds through the speaker and Jay's voice cracks along with it, and Tim's fingers tighten around the phone. How long it's been since he's heard that static anywhere but in his own head, spreading behind his eyes on sleepless nights when he can still taste the blood in the back of his throat, can still feel it flaking beneath his fingernails and staining his hands no matter how hard he tries to scrub it away.

“ _I crossed through that tunnel...”_ More static, drowning out the rest of the sentence, but it doesn't matter; the words ring in his ears anyway, clear as day.

He shouldn't be surprised by this. He's not stupid; he'd noticed all of the time-related oddities that that _thing_ seemed fond of causing. He and Jay even had a conversation about it once, a few months after the fact, after they descended into a dark basement in the middle of the day and escaped less than a minute later into a pitch-black night.

He doesn't like to think about that night.

Still, the precedent is there; he shouldn't be surprised by this.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

“ _Just...call me, as soon as you get this.”_

As the rest of the message plays, the audio grows more distorted, and Tim sits frozen, a numb heaviness settling into his joints. He'd reach for the heater to chase away the ice clawing at his veins, if he could only move, could only do anything but listen silently as Jay's words become choked gasps for air.

And then, just like that, the message ends, and the spell is broken.

Tim blinks a few times, lets out a breath.

His thumb hovers above the trash icon.

It's just an echo, no more real than any of the nightmares that have become increasingly few and far-between the more distance he puts behind himself. It's nothing more than a piece of corrupted memory; he can't help now, anymore than he could back then, and it can't help him. There's nothing to do now but let go.

But then, he supposes, it can't really _hurt_ him now, either, can it?

He presses Call.

And he waits, as he always does, as the line rings once, twice, and a third time, and he holds his breath and counts down from five and braces himself for the harsh computerized voice informing him that the number he's dialed isn't available right now, and when instead of the familiar message he hears a click and a dull _thud_ on the other end he nearly drops the phone again.

“Jay?” The word is out of his mouth before he can stop it, so hopeful that it surprises him. He presses the phone harder into his ear until it hurts, squeezes his eyes shut to focus on the static that he slowly identifies as wind coming through the speaker, and another, sharper sound that he can't quite identify.

None of those noises sound like a response, though, and his shoulders sag a bit already, but he can't stop himself from trying again, “Jay, is that... Are you there?”

A shuffling reaches his ears, and his breathing halts completely.

“Hhe...” It's a soft noise, barely identifiable as human, but it _is_. “Low?”

“Oh my God. _Jay_ , oh my _God_ where are you are you alright can you hear me do you understand me–” He's already shifting the car into drive, screeching out of the parking lot and hardly hearing the blaring horns of protest from behind him.

“Low...I...” That sharp noise from before drowns Jay out for a moment. “W–where...”

“Jay, listen to me, this is Tim, I...” God, where does he _begin_? What can he even say to someone who's been dead – he was _dead_ , Tim saw his _corpse_ for fuck's sake – for the better part of three years? “I– I need to know where you are. I need you to tell me what's around you, can you do that?” He's headed east on the interstate, already, he knows the general direction that he has to go because there's nowhere else in the world that Jay _could_ be...

At least, he hopes so.

“Please, Jay, this is really important,” he adds, and it sounds like Jay is working to collect his breath, like the simple act of speaking is draining all the energy he has left.

And for all Tim knows, it very well could be, and his already-white knuckles tighten on the steering wheel at that thought.

“T...trees,” is Jay's labored reply, and Tim nearly throws the phone out the window.

“I need you to be more specific than just _trees_ , Jay, _please_ ,” and it takes every ounce of his self-control to sound calm, and collected, to keep the panic and urgency from bleeding into every word as Jay is probably bleeding out right now and he's _so damn far away_ and he can't be too late _again_ –

“Trees,” Jay repeats, and there's a wheezing cough before he finally manages to choke out, with a distinctly emphasized _th_ sound, “Threes.”

Jay starts to say something else, but that sharp sound from before blares in Tim's ear instead, insistent and piercing, and he finally identifies it as a bird, screeching from somewhere oddly close to the microphone on the other end.

“Jay, I'm coming to find you, just... Stay put, if you're somewhere that seems safe, and I'll–”

There's a _thud_ in his ear, and Tim's heart skips a beat.

“Jay?”

The static on the other end has stopped.

“Jay, are you there?”

He pulls the phone away from his ear with a curse. The call seems to have dropped, but there's no notification, like it never happened in the first place.

He shakes his head, with a mix of something like denial and determination blooming in his chest, and floors it.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Tim clenches his fist. He stops himself from punching the dashboard, and instead settles for squeezing the steering wheel until a dull pain throbs in his fingers. He needs to hit something, _anything_ , just for the sensation of impact, for the acknowledgment that he has some semblance of control on the world around him, so that he can tell himself that it was his choice to come back to this godforsaken place, that he isn't being dragged back here by some unseen force.

Then again, he can't really know that for sure, now can he?

That thought forces another shudder down his spine, and he throws open the door and climbs out of the car before he can change his mind.

A day and a half of driving, and now Rosswood Park stretches out before him.

It looks different than it used to, and he tries to find comfort in that; rather than a blank canvas of grass reaching out from the woods a few football fields away, there's a fence and a concrete path and a dog park in between here and there.

It would feel ordinary, safe, almost, if only a single sign of life was present.

Instead, it's just him and the empty space.

Out of spite, he starts walking forward. He's had a lot of time to think, and he wishes he hadn't.

The terror and elation and panic at the thought of Jay still being alive, somewhere, _out there_ , somewhere, had only lasted him for a good thirty minutes or so, and he's a little ashamed of that. He should be overjoyed, not exasperated, not trudging into this feeling like he's stuck in this never-ending cycle all over again.

What was that fucking line? _Stuck in a loop of unhappiness._

He scoffs out loud, and doesn't care.

He's spent the rest of the drive letting himself think about the past several years, something he's been trying to avoid for, well, the past several years. Maybe, after all this, he's ready for it to be over, one way or another.

Maybe he's just walking straight to his own demise, and he doesn't care.

It's that thought that's pushed him past every mile marker and every chance to just turn around and delete that voicemail. It's that thought that's pushing him deeper and deeper into the woods, to where he knows he'll find _something_. Whether it's Jay, or not, he almost doesn't care.

Whether it's Jay, or not, there will be _something_ waiting for him here. He can feel it, pressing at the back of his skull like an oncoming migraine, pulsing in his ears like an all-too-familiar static...

He stops walking, and listens.

The white noise continues, distant, and even, and very much real. Slowly, Tim continues forward, toward the source of the sound, a mix of dread and hysteria rising up in his chest with every step as his view between the trees ahead begins to clear.

He brushes past one last tree branch, and falls to his hands and knees on the dirt path, and he laughs. Quietly at first, then louder, until the sound is audible over the rushing water of the creek in front of him, cutting a path through the woods, and flooding the overgrown tunnel ahead.

Jay isn't here.

He was never here.

Tim covers his face with his hands and screams into his palms, twice, until the sound tears his throat raw.

 


End file.
